We presented our just-opened web site - initiative named the New Beauty Council – and the first theme we discussed with professors and students from  Architectural school in Stockholm namely gender interpretation of the city surrounding. 

Our project is initially a reply to the Stockholm City Beauty Council – the organisation, which has a mandate to decide how Stockholm should look like. We disagree with its conservative understanding what is beautiful, so we want to open up the place where other stories of the beauty can be spoken. 

If you sit down together at the same time on the sculpture and look at each other – make a wish! If you make the same wish it will be realised.

Make a wish when you put your finger into Ericsson’s ear: the deeper the better.

Run around the flowerbed 100 times and you will get married within a year.

If you manage to embrace the tree any of your wishes will be realised.

But if you have not succeeded to embrace the tree drop some coins on the hatch and your wish will be realised with the probability 50% x 50%.

“We found the statue of Juliet and there is a tradition going that if you touch her right breast, it will bring luck in love. She stood there, head shyly bent and I felt like the terrible rapist, stepping up and grabbing a firm hold. It WAS an opportunity not to miss though, so I just had to, silly at it is”.
Lasse, 51 years old, solution designer at Scania, Sweden.
From www.euronimbus.blogspot.com

“In small yard you can see bronze statue of Juliet. Tradition say that if you want to have love in your life you should grab her right breast and her arm. So I did it”.
Jelena, born 1972, Belgrade.
From www.virtualtourist.com

“We also found a large bronze statue of Juliet which is supposed to offer good luck to those who touch its left breast. Because of the thousands upon thousands of people who come through here, that spot of the statue practically shines”.
Jonathan Hiltz, a TV producer and host of the upcoming program Vloggers, on Bite Television.
From www.macleans.ca/culture/lifestyle

This publication is the result of my inquiry into a simple question: why do people in our rational century create rituals tfor some public art objects? Why do they throw coins, rub certain parts of a sculpture or go around it several times? As you can see from above quoted tourist diaries – they do it because others do. But why then others do it? Who starts a tradition? Can a single person manipulate human behaviour and start a new tradition? Why do people need this kind of traditions to exist? What does it all mean?
Trying to find an answer on this question I realised that there is no one science, which can give an answer to it. It works more like that – one question, several approaches. So my investigation is not only mine: I am very grateful to those researchers from different fields of knowledge that agreed to share their views on this subject.

My toilet #2: “The origin of the new bourgeoisie” with installation “The sanitation and education for the new public: the parallel history of toilets and museums”.

the same but closer – materials which people used instead of toilet paper before toilet paper:
moss

soft end of a rope

and something special – Swedish wooden rövsticka (actually a plastic copy of it)

Beatrice Brovia, designer of the toilet #2, observes her museological masterpiece – the representation of museums/toilets history timeline. It was so cool to work with you, Beatrice!

My toilet #3: “The Concise vocabulary of the new bourgeoisie”

and closer…

Toilets are clean and visitors are coming in

to understand our exhibition one needs to be guided by a catalogue texts

Prof. Ronald Jones is in a hurry to listen his own voice in toilet #1 (co-curator Elisabet asked him to read her questionnaire and my boy friend artist Tomas Nygren recorded it. It starts to talk to a visitor when he/she enters a toilet).

and after that he tells everyone how super it was!

#1
The Origin of the New Bourgeoisie
Installation: 12 museum alike transparent boxes with various materials which people used for their needs before toilet paper was invented. Boxes are arranged as a timeline of the parallel history of toilets and museums.
Designer: Beatrice Brovia

The new bourgeoisie is a social stratum based on the 19th century social shift towards a new method of controlling citizens via public self-discipline and acceptance of hygienic norms. Upon facing the reality of an expanding urban population, these tools of social control became crucial. Citizens were expected to re-make themselves, so as to be more manageable members of an evolving society.
Notable public spaces, such as museums or fairs, became perfect “schools” where individuals implemented these new behaviourisms. Simultaneously, the government utilized the aforementioned tools to highlight a nation of advanced political reform and its stemming technical development. In conjunction, because of overpopulation, a new sanitation system was essentialized. Lavatories and public museums were paired as two parts of the same social project. In this social system of self-organization, bearers and spreaders of culture – a.k.a. the cultural intelligentsia – adopted the responsibility
to produce valuable offshoots. It would not be an exaggeration to admit that the origin of the new bourgeoisie is situated in historical aggregates of flushed toilets and public lavatories, as well as public museums.

Timeline
The Sanitation and Education for a New Public:
The Parallel History of Toilets and Museums
1759 The British Museum, the oldest independent museum in the world, is founded.
1775 The first patent for the flushing toilet is issued to Alexander Cummings.
1778 Toilets are regarded as perfect when Joseph Bramah substitutes the slide valve
with the crank valve.
1792 Only nine days after the fall of the French Monarchy, a decree is issued deeming
the former Royal Palace a public museum, otherwise known today as the Louvre.
1848 In England, a Public Health Act is passed mandating an arrangement for every house
in the country – whether it be a flush toilet, privy or an ash pit.
1851 The Great Exhibition or the “Crystal Palace” becomes the first in a series of World’s Fair
exhibitions on culture and industry; it is held in London.
1851 George Jennings installs the first public toilets at The Great Exhibition.
1857 The South Kensington Museum in London opens. It is officially dedicated to serve the public
with a friendly admission policy for the working class.
1857 The first factory-made toilet paper is produced by Joseph Cayetty in the United States.
1869 The American Museum of Natural History is founded.
1872 French municipalities ask private companies to manage public toilets for a lease period
of 20 years.
1900 The number of public museums in Britain increase from 50 in 1860 to 200.

Sources: www.wikipedia.org, www.masterplumbers.com, www.toiletology.com, www.plumbingworld.com, www.victoriancrapper.com, www.sulabhtoiletmuseum.org
Schubert, Karsten. The Curator’s Egg: The Evolution of the Museum Concept from
the French Revolution to the present day. London: One-Off Press, 2002
Bennett, Tony. The Birth of the Museum: History, Theory, Politics. London and New York: Routledge, 1995

#2
The Concise Vocabulary of the New Bourgeoisie
Installation: text on toilet’s tiles.

Language is not only a tool for communication but a seal, marking a wide range of social strata. Regarding power structures, no unified language exists; rather: many languages live among each other. These same languages create borders between people, helping them formulate and maintain significant interests. Often, a person who belongs to a given community does not have to know what this-or-that notion means, as long as they approach or consider concepts in question under the umbrella of a designed perspective or set of circumstances, thereby placing oneself as a coined member of a desired group. Words are signs, as well as the clothes one wears, designs one purchases, architecture one admires and art one accepts. In “The Concise Vocabulary of the New Bourgeoisie,” I was interested in tracing trajectories of key notion-signs for the new bourgeoisie – a relatively fresh social stratum, where economic value is based on its “cultural capital” or the knowledge of how cultural
spheres operate. The first step towards becoming part of this new bourgeoisie is a thoughtful examination of its lexicon.

This is our introduction to a booklet:

On Target
On Target’s departure point is the wish to rethink the model of target groups,
appropriated from the field of marketing, and to apply it to the field of cultural
production. The show is thus aimed at a specific audience, The New
Bourgeoisie.

Participating artists, designers and writers:
Marco Bruzzone, K.Berg; Beatrice Brovia, Hanna Nilsson, Petter Odevall;
Terese Svoboda and j.s. davis.

Curated by: WIRE, the MA program in Critical Writing and Curatorial Practice,
Konstfack, Stockholm: j.s. davis, Annika Enqvist, Elisabet Eurén, Anna
Kharkina, Theodor Ringborg and Johanne Nordby Wernø.

WIRE approached curator Tirdad Zolghadr, responsible for the concurrent
Tensta Konsthall exhibition Lapdogs of the Bourgeoisie, and had him appoint
a target group for the Konstfack project: The New Bourgeoisie. The project
thereby responds to the adjacent exhibition’s concern with the social class of
art audiences.
In trying to identify their target group, the WIRE curators refer to sociologist
Pierre Bourdieu’s landmark work Distinction (1979). But as contemporary
Sweden differs from 1960′s France, what today is equivalent to the various
social classes meticulously described by Bourdieu?
In answering this question, the exhibition raises a broad range of sub-
themes, such as: the parallel history of museums and modern sanitation; the
language of the new bourgeoisie; the African Dogon tribe; the rising interest in
the Creative Class; the use of urban imagery; the attempt to customize form
into perfection; and contemporary writers and poets which respond to the wet-
roped influence of present-day jargon by formulating linguistic hybrids or by
unearthing true stories marginalized.

Thank you:
Beatrice Ehrström, EMS, Tero Enqvist, Ulf Eriksson, Inga Grønseth, Mari
Hovden, Rolf Hughes, Ronald Jones, Sara Kristoffersson, Izabela Lewalski,
Tomas Nygren, Renee Padt, Derek Picken, Måns Wrange, Tensta Konsthall,
Helena Åberg and Niclas Önnesjö.
Sponsors: Adline Cad&Cut AB and Alloffset AB.

On Target
February 10 – March 30, 2008
Welcome to the opening: February 9, 13.00 – 16.00
Tensta Konsthall.

Tensta Konsthall, Taxingegränd 10
Opening hours: Tue – Sun 12.00 – 17.00
www.tenstakonsthall.se

Sponsors: Adline Cad&Cut AB and Alloffset AB

Elverket web page: http://www.dramaten.se/default.asp?id=4077
Photographs of Liza Morozova performance (made by Xenia Nikolskaya):